Will F1 cars lap quicker in 2010?

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Mark Webber's fastest lap at Brazil beat the 2008 mark by 0.003 seconds

Thanks to safety rules and cost cutting F1 is far from being the unfettered pursuit of raw speed it used to be.

But it never fails to impress me how cunning designers keep coming up with ways to wriggle free from the constraints of the rule book and build F1 cars which are just a little bit quicker than the governing body wants them to be.

There are some significant changes to the F1 rules this year, but not as drastic as those we saw in 2009. So how much more speed can the designers conjure out of the cars – and how will it affect race strategy?

How 2010 rules changes will affect lap times

Fastest qualifying laps at three tracks, 1996-2009 (click to enlarge)

Last year’s rules changes were mainly intended to allow the cars to follow each other more closely but they also had the effect of slowing the cars down, or at least keeping them roughly at their 2008 level of performance. This year the aerodynamic rules are largely unchanged apart from minor details such as the banning of the wheel ‘spinners’.

Bridgestone 2010 F1 tyre width

More significant is the reduced width of the front wheels explained in the diagram (right). Front tyres will be 245mm wide in 2010, 25mm less than last year. The cars will lose almost 10% of their front tyre contact patch which will obviously cut their cornering speeds.

It’s down to the designers to claw back that lost time – and more – by refining the cars’ aerodynamics and weight distribution as best they can. It’ll get harder for them in 2011 if the mooted ban on double-diffusers comes to pass.

I suspect we will ultimately see the 2010 F1 cars lapping quicker than their predecessors on a single low-fuel qualifying run. But the banning of refuelling will make it a very different story when it comes to race lap times.

Race lap times

Lewis Hamilton's lap times, 2009 Hungarian Grand Prix (click to enlarge)

With drivers no longer allowed to refuel during the race, cars will have much larger fuel tanks. This will have one obvious effect – as well as others that might not be immediately apparent.

Cars will now be much slower at the start of races than at the end of them. In the example above from last year, Lewis Hamilton began his 24-lap middle stint in the Hungarian Grand Prix lapping two seconds per lap slower than at the end of it. Multiply that across a full race distance and we could see lap times differing by six seconds, though this will vary with different circuits and conditions.

It will also have an interested effect on strategy. Previously after a car pitted the driver would leave the pits with more fuel on board and lap more slowly than he had immediately before his stop. Now, as the drivers’ fuel load will not increase during a pit stop, they will be faster immediately after it, thanks to their fresher tyres.

This may tempt a driver who is stuck behind a rival into pitting early in an attempt to get ahead. But they could run into trouble later in the race when their tyres are more worn than their competitors’ are.

Stint lengths are likely to change too. Instead of splitting the race up into roughly equal portions, as in the example above, tyres will now suffer greater punishment at the beginning of a race compared to the end.

Using rough numbers we can see that if a car carries 200kg of fuel to last a 60-lap Grand Prix its average weight over the first half of the race will be 151kg compared to 51kg for the second half.

Drivers are still required to use each of Bridgestone’s two compounds at least once per race. In our example, they could start the race on the harder tyre then switch to the softer. But the exact moment when they should change is no longer dictated by how much fuel’s in the tank – it’s down to the driver to decide if and when he needs new tyres.

Faster laps, slower races?

The upshot of all this is that even though we may well see faster individual laps in 2010 compared to 2009, race distances will take longer to complete. If we get a safety car period at Singapore – as we have the last two years – we might not even see the race distance completed within the two hour time limit.

We’ll get out first impression of how quick the 2010 F1 cars are when testing begins at Valencia on February 1st. Here’s a reminder of what the quickest times were last year in testing at the three tracks where the teams are returning this year:

Jerez – 1’17.494 (Kazuki Nakajima, Williams-Toyota)
Circuit de Catalunya – 1’18.926 (Rubens Barrichello, Brawn
Valencia – No group test in 2009

2010 F1 cars

Image (C) Red Bull/Getty images

Author information

Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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83 comments on “Will F1 cars lap quicker in 2010?”

  1. Who are you? Are you some sort of F1 Super Hero?

    1. Prisoner Monkeys
      11th January 2010, 7:32

      Pretty much.

      1. Mouse_Nightshirt
        11th January 2010, 7:43

        More of a F1 Deity really.

    2. Er, no…

    3. Actually Keith is head of the technical governing body of the FIA.

      1. Head Technical Bloke…

    4. No! He’s our next Prime Minister :P

      1. Nah! He isn’t, PM is too boring a job. Maybe the successor to Daniel Craig?

    5. Nice! I laughed at this.

  2. does the change in tyre dynamics mean that everyone will start on primes & end on options?

    it will be interesting to see the repercussions of the strategical mistakes teams & drivers will make. Hopefully no one will actually run out of fuel!

    also, i cannot wait for the return of “true” qualifying. with such a big grid (& a handful of rookies) i expect everyone to be pushing for pole position & not settle for mid-grid slots which may be more dangerous at starts. i remember DC setting up tows for Mika to get maximum speed & Frentzen putting an Acer Prost in P4(but only to stall it on the grid)

    1. No I think some races the pole setter may opt for a short fast first stint on the option tyre. Nigel Mansell often did this when F1 last ran full race on a tank. You get well ahead of the trouble, build a gap and when the fuel load starts to come down and the tyres are going off you pit for primes. Pit stops are very short if your just changing the tyres!

      1. They’ll be a bit longer in total, now there’s a pit lane speed limit. Safety cars will be a pain as well. But I hope we see a few pole sitters trying this.

  3. I agree with you Keith.
    One important factor will be the fact that at the beginning the fuel load will force the cars to run with a certain load on suspension, while at the end the load will be very different. This will impact a lot on the distance from ground, and on the behavior of the aerodynamic device, which use to be very critical.
    Not an easy challenge for the engineers.

    1. Yeah there’s some debate over whether they’re allowed to adjust the ride height during pit stops (they can’t while the car’s on the track like they did in the early ’90s).

      1. BRING BACK ACTIVE SUSPENSION!!

        I believe it was banned after Alain Prost won the title in 93 for Williams.

        That was such a leap in technology and as usual it was banned. Yes, we can argue that there was an urfair advantage round corners, and of course in the current environment, development costs would be too high.

        On the flip side, it will be interesting to see how drivers cope with a constantly changing car under them. I feel that drivers with the best car control and management skills will have the edge next season. Which means, its properly set up for Michael isn’t it? Its the game he perfected.

        1. It wasn’t just the performance advantage it handed the team that got their first which got active suspension banned – there were safety and cost concerns as well.

          Of course some people will insist it was all a sop to Ferrari who couldn’t get the technology working (remember Berger’s car coming out of the Estoril pit lane perpendicular to the track?): Banned! Active suspension

  4. Honestly, the observation is from Giorgio Piola’s Gazzetta article.

  5. Keith, I hope you compared the old qualifying laps with todays’ fastest laps in the qualyfing and not the fake pole lap times with full fuel loads.

    1. Yes these are the fastest laps achieved during qualifying – usually Q2, not the fuel-heavy times set in Q3.

      1. What happened to 2005 quli at Albert Park, it’s no ton your graph.

        1. 05 was affected by rain, and was split into two sessions, with the qualifying time an aggregate of the two sessions. Meaning: pointless.

  6. I think, only qualifying lap time will decrease due to low fuel run.
    Fastest lap during race will pretty much be same.
    Because-
    1. Car weight is increased but aerodynamics will be improved= that neutralise’s each other
    2. Narrower tires mean less surface area but better aerodynamic air flow over tired= that neutralise’s each other
    Just my opinion!!

    1. Disagree with #2 entirely. If tyres affect on aerodynamics more than they provide grip, you wouldn’t see those big fat tyres on F1 cars. F1 tyres are the only parts of an F1 car that gives a significant, and roughly constant, amount of grip regardless of the car’s current velocity. Smaller front tyres will hurt speeds significantly.

  7. If any of the new teams start to struggle financially, it will be interesting to see if they get tempted to ‘do a Toleman’ and half fill their cars to make them look faster than they are to try and get more sponsorhsip…

    1. You’re thinking Derek Warwick at Brands in ’82? They could do but it would be hard to keep it a secret. They’d need to come up with a fake reason for the car retiring.

      But even if the car was just short by a lap that could mean being 2.5kg lighter per lap every lap on some tracks.

      1. ha and if a race ends around half way (like malaysia 09) then a half filled car would win easily!

    2. Would you give sponsorship to a quick team that retired all the time though?

      1. Well you could argue that a back marker team that short filled their car to get pole and run at the front for part of the race even though it meant an early retirement would achieve more media exposure such as TV time than if they just trundled around at the back all the time.

        I suppose it depends if you believe the saying there is no such thing as bad publicity.

    3. they would need a driver who would be willing to crash it early on, and then lie about it.

      1. I know just the man!

        1. he’d still only be about 20th, no one would notice.

          There’ll be less of a mad rush for the pits now when the safety car appears – or is that still a good time to change tyres?

          1. of course it is! it makes the impact of a pit stop far less. because you can come out from one and instantly rejoin the pack behind the safety car.

    4. But they’d still qualify down the grid…

      1. Warwick qualified 16th when he tried it at Brands, but was (I think) running 2nd when he ran dry. In the early phases of the race he was the fastest man on the track by around a second a lap, but was around 2 seconds slower than the front runners in qualifying. He retired just over halfway through the race, so with the tightness of a modern grid a team employing such tactics wouldn’t have to take so much fuel out to gain an advantage and could make it further into the race.

        Of course, in 1982 cars could overtake, Warwick had a turbo while some others didn’t, and retirement’s were more common. I don’t think anyone else has tried it since though, so we probably wont see any such thing again.

  8. I don’t think the 2010 spec car will make any records of the fastest laps,as remember they will weigh 620kg instead of 605kg.But it is good as the race time will now be longer.But I still think their still will be a lack of overtaking.

  9. I think no refueling is not safe. Be as well giving them back turbos. Then we will see lap time difference :) if we can squeeze 500-700hp from a 2.4L v8 or w/e. Imagine what we can do with a turbo on them :) mwhahahah. i say scrap the no refueling and bring back the turbos.

    1. just realiseing, at tne end of the race, they will be light and if they did a good strategy they will be on good tyres to. The cars will have slightly more power to carry the weight at the start (maybe) so we will see some uber super good racing at the end :)

  10. In 2009, the fuel loads and tyre condition were almost all the same for every car for the last 10 laps of the race. The big difference now is that we will have cars with varying states of tyre wear in the closing stages – this should be very interesting.

    Essentially, excitement in the final few laps of any race can make the whole event memorable – Mansell v Senna @ Monaco and Kimi v Lewis @ Spa (albeit due to weather) are two such examples.

    There is a lot of talk of overtaking being necessary, but exactly when that overtaking takes place is not so often mentioned – perhaps it should be.

    1. I think the physical conditions of the drivers must be high to withstand the full race. Think of heat races at Bahrain and Malaysia.

      Vettel will find such conditions difficult and I am happy Kimi is not here to witness this season as he normally loses consentration midway. On the other hand, will MSC be fit enough for the heat? …… Can’t wait :-)

      1. yeah if Kimi were in F1 for 2010, he would have taken up a better driver’s place (ie. Alonso’s at ferrari, schumi’s at mercedes or button’s at mclaren’s *cough*)

    2. ‘The big difference now is that we will have cars with varying states of tyre wear in the closing stages’
      sorry but could you explain why this will be the case? surely everyone will play to a similar strategy…

      1. Because the driving styles of the drivers will dictate the rate of tyre wear during a GP.

        This is different to fuel use where the optimal strategy is usually identical for all drivers.

  11. Great article as usual.

    In my opinion, the longer wheelbases will be beneficial in qualifying, as the cars will be lighter and aerodynamically efficient.

    The narrowing of the front tyres, from what I have read, has been introduced so that the car is much more balanced. Cars in 2009 had extremely pointy front ends. (I hope I am right).

    So, all changes are suited to make the qualifying a super-duper quick affair. But races should be slower.

    Keith, I don’t understand the logic of starting with harder tyres. If a car is going to be 6 seconds slower on harder tyres + full tank (as you said), then on the combination of softer tyres + full tank, I think the gap will be about 3-4 seconds. Thus, using the soft tyres for just around 12-15 laps, one pit-stop distance can be achieved. A driver can then take on the harder tyres and lesser fuel load and can go the rest of the distance. He might be slower in the final stages of the race, but definitely not 2-3 seconds slower (the amount by which he was faster at the start).

    1. “The narrowing of the front tyres, from what I have read, has been introduced so that the car is much more balanced. Cars in 2009 had extremely pointy front ends. (I hope I am right).”

      You’re right. But only because they couldn’t increase the size of the rear tyres. When you’re taking away tyre surface, you’re taking away a tonne of grip. Who cares about the better balance of the car: a balanced car with low grip is never gonna be as quick as a car with high grip.

  12. I think the fastest lap time in qualifying will be quicker in 2010 but this is due to proper qualifying returning rather than any changes to the cars.

    The fastest lap in the race could be quicker at some Grand Prix, I think it will just depend on how the race develops and which drivers on fresh tyres are pushing at the end of the race

  13. I think they will be slightly quicker, both in qualifying and in single lap during the race.
    I trust too much in aerodinamically efficiency increase of the cars. I would prefer aerodynamics to be less important.

    1. I think there could be possibility for increased overtaking due to cars behavior over the course of the race. Unless there is a team that has the wood over everyone no car will be fastest across all the differing loads of weight and tyre wear etc

      So team A may be quicker on heavy load and make the pass because team B couldn’t defend in hevey car yet come later on in race that may have changed and now car B will be much racier and breeze past…now if car A was that much better on full tanks will the gap be big enough to beat a speedier lighter car B???

      So as a designer do I go for max balance on full or heavy tanks and hope to run away and make a big enough gap to nurse it home or do I go for a car that comes into it’s own on half a tank and left and sprint all the way to the flag?
      Of course yo would want a car to be good from lap 1 to checkered flag but it’s a long race and big variations of that race now…..

      Should be interesting. More interesting than just tyres alone like 09 with Brawn and RBR wet vs cold vs hot…now there is still that plus heaps more to look at.

      1. McLaren were experts at building cars that would perform well across the varying fuel weights during the race, I hope they have not thrown all their old data away.

    2. What do the parc fermé rules say about changing the car between qualifying and the race?

      Will they have to qualify with a set-up that works on full tanks early in the race, or can they make it as fast as possible for qualifying, then apply a compromise set-up for the race.

      1. Surely the teams will run a hot lap before the end of Q3, trust it, and change the setup for the race before parc ferme comes in effect.

  14. After qually they are under parc fermé so can not make changes to the setup, but once the race gets under way I don’t know. I’m prety sure they can adjust the wing angle front and back. Last year they could change front wing angle from inside the car during the race.

  15. If I have to venture a guess, I would say that the 2010 cars will be faster than the 09 cars (at least towards the end of a race and in quali). The cars (minimum weight) are slightly heavier, but I think this will be more than offset by the constructor’s coming to grips with the aero rules (i.e. copying the red bull RB5). Also, the front tires are skinnier but I dont think that will lower overall cornering speed, but rather improve the handling balance (especially considering that te new cars should have even more rearward weight bias). Plus the narrower front tires will be better aerodynamically. Additionally, the Ferrari and McLaren will not have to spend so much development resources on KERS systems, meaning they can devote their time to aero work. However, I think that they will be MUCH slower in wet conditions than the 09 machines due to the increased minimum weight and fuel load.

  16. Is qualifying keeping the knockout format?

  17. Speaking of short filling the fuel tanks……….

    Are the teams REQUIRED to fill the tanks with a minimum amount of fuel [either via weight or quantity]?

    If not, it will be interesting to see if teams take a chance on a rainy weekend, chancing that the race wont go the full distance due to weather/time. Short fill the tanks with as little fuel as they think will get them to the end, thus being quicker than the rest of the field.

    Not sure how this would effect the minimum weight requirements. But if the teams are in fact allowed to use as little fuel as they want, it would lead to an interesting strategy – at times.

    Could also work for temas with better fuel mileage. Has anyone studied the new fuel requirements? Woudl this be allowed?

    1. Are the teams REQUIRED to fill the tanks with a minimum amount of fuel [either via weight or quantity]?

      No, there’s no minimum level specified, so they could get away with under-filling them as David suggested.

      1. And this is important as some engines are definitely more fuel efficient than others.

  18. You may indeed see some faster laps during the
    races in 2010 – especially if the FIA decides to award a world championship point for it.

  19. it wouldnt be too much of a risk to say that by mid season, the cars will be quicker. It’s the nature of F1.

  20. I was wondering if F1 cars would be able to use software that would prevent them from running out of fuel?

    MotoGP have this (they have a set amount of fuel), and it works by cutting the revs on the engine when the ECU computes that the fuel tank doesn’t hold enough fuel to get the bike to the end of the race at the current pace.

    If you go all out for two thirds of the race, you may then find yourself in for a bit of a shock in the last third!

    1. Aren’t electronic aids banned in F1 like traction control, active suspension and ABS.

      Meaning the fuel software will also be banned?

      1. It could be that it is already a functioning part of the standard ECU?

        Although, currently drivers are told to adjust the mixture on the engine by their race engineer, which is just another way of going about the same thing as only pit to car telemetery is prohibited. This would mean the engineers would know fuel level, current consumption and race distance remaining and would advise the driver accordingly.

  21. Thanks to safety rules and cost cutting F1 is far from being the unfettered pursuit of raw speed it used to be.

    The fundamental problem with modern F1.

    the reduced width of the front wheels… Front tyres will be 245mm wide in 2010, 25mm less than last year. The cars will lose almost 10% of their front tyre contact patch which will obviously cut their cornering speeds.

    When F1 switched to “grooves” they made the front tyre larger to compensate but when they switched back to slick tryes the teams had already designed the cars with the old size tyre so they couldn’t change the size back to how it was. As a result oversteer was more of an issue so this may not actually do that much to slow the cars down, also taking into account the aerodynamic effect.

    1. “The fundamental problem with modern F1.”

      The cars have gotten to be as fast as they are ever likely to go and still be safe to drive, and you only need to look at what has happened recently to realise why ‘spendathons’ don’t work.

      1. The less speed = more safety thing is only true up to a point. F1 cars now are not more safe than the ones of the past because they are slower. They are faster and safer because of a greater emphasis on safety. F1 cars could be made safe enough to travel at significantly higher speeds and circuits could be made safer also.

        Spending more to go faster doesn’t equate either. Toyota spent a lot more than Williams but were never really that much faster, spending efficiently is more importantly.

        Lastly the manufacturers didn’t leave F1 because they couldn’t afford to stay they left because they could afford to leave. Williams rely on F1 for their existence but Toyota don’t thus they were able to leave.

        1. You can make cars faster by giving them more power and more downforce. All you will achieve by doing that is having faster F1 cars and not necessarily ‘better’ F1 cars. You may also find that drivers are already pretty close to ‘blacking out’ on some fast corners.

          To make circuits safer you could first of all dump Monaco and circuits like it and then maybe move back the spectators another hundred yards or so.

          Spending more doesn’t necessarily equate to speed, but how fast do you think Toyota would have been if they hadn’t spent the money they have? How good would they have gone on £40 mil a season!?

          The manufacturers left because they realised that only one team out of the ones who were throwing money away could become world champions in any given year.

          Here’s a link that tells you just how bad it got.

          http://www.pitpass.com/fes_php/pitpass_news_item.php?fes_art_id=39752

          1. Down force slows cars down.

            A good F1 car is a fast one.

            If drivers are close to blacking out in high G corners then they’re not fit enough. With the help of G-suits and better conditioning jet fighter pilots can handle up to 9G sustained and higher for shorter periods. That is double the highest an F1 driver can expect to experience.

            If you said “we’ve made an F1 car that can travel at 400mph but it’s a bit too fast to drive around Monaco safely” I’d say screw Monaco let’s go racing at 400mph.

            You don’t have to move fans further away, Abu Dhabi has some solutions to this but there could be other ways to deal with safety issues that are as yet unexplored.

            Toyota did not need to spend that much money. Ferrari, Renault, McLaren and Brawn, the teams that won the championships while Toyota were competing, none of them spent as much as Toyota and yet they were all faster.

            £40m a season was and still is a joke.

            Toyota and Honda probably planned to have a limited time in F1, they were not run like sustainable businesses and were probably just expensive exercises in PR. From the moment Honda cam up with that Earth Dreams cr@p in was obvious their departure was imminent. BMW left because they felt F1 had degenerated and they were probably right.

            That article is poor and misleading. I’m sure the £175 book it takes it’s figures from is better written and that would be the best place to view those figures but just stripping them out of a 180 report and quoting them out of context does not give an accurate representation of the data. There is no reference as to how they came to those figures which is especially important when considering value over such time frames, how they took inflation into account etc. So you can’t really take that article seriously.

  22. One is sure – the cars will be even uglier.
    With the rediction of the front grip, the engineers will shift the weight of the cars further to the back.
    This means even longer noses.
    http://static.sidepodcast.com/content/2009/01/mclaren_2009_nose.jpg

    1. Unless they are thinking about putting the fuel tank in the nose, I wouldn’t think that they would be any longer, quite the opposite in fact!

      Most pictures I have seen of 2010 cars indicate that the sidepods are longer, since the extra length of the car is made up by having to make the fuel tank bigger that sits just behind the driver.

    2. ? why would they have to sift the weight even further back than what?

      09 all the weight was thrown forward as compared to 08 so if they did have to move weight slightly back from 09 the weight will still be a long way forward to 08.

      The cars wont look much longer than the 09 RBR as that was the longest car last year.

  23. My only worry is that the FIA’s appointed sporting working group will do a kneejerk reaction and make the teams do a second mandatory pitstop/tyrechange, as has been rumoured in a few places.

    I think that would be unneccessary.

    1. the drivers might have to do a second stop anyway! Since i don’t think the softer tyre will last on a one stop strategy.

      1. Maybe, but let’s just give them the opportunity and freedom to decide themselves…some will try it and make it work, some will try it and it won’t work, some will take the extra stop.

        But variations drop out when you get prescriptive with such things.

  24. nice article, keith. i expect cars to lap at the same pace or maybe a bit quicker. hubcaps were worth about .3 sec/lap, so the value of their banning is not in speed reduction but in cost (small), safety (medium)and trulli-train prevention (large). i don’t expect the front tire width reduction to reduce speed at all.

    there was a proposal for 2010 mandating a 10mm radius on the edges of an areo device, in order to pose less threat to tires. was this proposal put into effect?

  25. I’m old enough to remember the FIA contemplating narrower front tyres in the early 90’s and Williams testing some narrower tyres for Goodyear on spec…. they went faster because of lower drag…. and the FIA quietly dropped the proposal.

    The size of the contact patch is related to tyre pressure and construction, not tyre width, so they may not loose any contact patch area, depending on what games Bridgestone play…. but braking distances should be fractionally longer.

    So on low fuel at least I expect them to be faster…..

    I was interested with the graph showing a steady increase in lap times at Bahrain ….. what is so special there that they buck the trend?

    1. “The size of the contact patch is related to tyre pressure and construction, not tyre width, so they may not loose any contact patch area, depending on what games Bridgestone play…. but braking distances should be fractionally longer.”

      You’re telling me a 1mm wide tyre can provide the same grip as a 1000000000000km wide tyre? Come on, mate.

      1. 200 lbs of load in the tyre at 20 psi gives 10 sq inches of contact patch…. (200 / 20) etc … thats physics, irrespective of tyre size…. the tyre construction reduces that patch size because some load is carried directly by the side walls…. but for the minor changes changes we are talking about, the tyre manufacturer I’m sure can keep the side walls carrying the same load and so the patches the same size if they want to…

  26. I can’t wait for F1 drivers to start wearing G-suits. :/

    Which are totally ineffective on a drivers lateral (side to side) movements anyway.

    However, it will certainly be interesting to see how the drivers react to the ever changing car dynamics over a race distance.

    1. So you’re saying a driver can’t black out then because blood flow to the brain wouldn’t be restricted?

      Drivers experience lateral, longitudinal and vertical G. Take a corner like Eau Rouge for example. Also their seating potion should be considered as they are pretty much horizontal.

      1. It’s not a question of blood flow. It’s a question of muscle strain, particularly at 400mph.:)

        But anyway, I have it on good authority that F1 cars have reached the safety limit for most of the circuits that they now perform on (including Spa).

        As for your thirst for speed. Have you tried watching Dragsters?

  27. I think it will be interesting in the teams’ strategies for the number of stops, as tire wear vs speed will be different for each chassis or driver preference. One team planning soft/hard, another hard/soft, another hard/soft/soft or soft/soft/hard. Eliminating the need to refuel from the equation seems to open the envelope for large relative differences in lap times, and might introduce more overtaking opportunities.

  28. I like the sound of it. What we need are closer race finishes. I am tired of seeing the race winner cross the line three seconds in hand of his rival. I hope these new rules change that.

  29. Good piece. F1 should aim to stir up the rules and regulations, within reason of course, and keep the designers and engineers and drivers on there toes…

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